US sends armed robots to front line

Plagued by mission fatigue, casualties and a public starting to ask just how long the US plans to keep its soldiers in Iraq, the American army may have come up with a solution: robots.

From March or April this year, it plans to deploy 18 armed robots to Iraq to help fight the "war on terror".

Although the robots have a snappy name - Swords, or Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems - they aren't quite the sleek, cold-blooded androids of I, Robot. Rather, they look more like the sort of contraption dreamt up for the programme Robot Wars.

The Swords are essentially modified bomb disposal robots of the sort commonly deployed in Northern Ireland and Iraq, where they have been successfully used to defuse roadside bombs.

Mounted on tracks, they have a standard army-issue automatic weapon bolted on top, capable of firing between 300 and 350 rounds a minute. The firing is done by a human soldier via a video camera.

"It's important to stress that not everything has to be super hi-tech," Anthony Sebasto, an official at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, which helped develop it, told Associated Press.

Developed at a cost of $2m (£1.07m) , Swords have certain advantages over the traditional human fighting unit.

They are cheap and require no food; they can be packed away between campaigns; they are unlikely - barring modifications - to write anguished letters home to loved ones or the media.

They are also a much better shot than the average GI.

But there are downsides: each robot has a top speed of 4mph and can only operate for one to four hours before it needs to refuel.

Swords, made by a small company in Massachusetts, are the first in a new generation of gizmos to go to war. Coming soon is the Future Combat System from Lockheed Martin, which includes a six-wheel, 2.5-tonne vehicle.

The Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is backing research into robots that can be dropped into combat zones from aircraft.